New day, new me: reflection from John

Yesterday, I saw one of the students in our daughter Bethany’s flat in Aberdeen had put a wee post it just inside the front door, on which she’d written ‘New Day! New Me’. It’s the last thing the girls will see each morning before going out to face the world!

I remembered it this morning when Duncan mentioned the ceaseless creativeness of God: each day, a new ‘morning has broken like the first morning’, each day we are changing and developing.

It’s not a helpful slogan if we fundamentally dislike who we are: if I’m feeling that way, then my lesson is perhaps not to strive to be different, but simply to realise who I am already – God’s precious chlld.

But it is so helpful if we remember that with God’s grace, we need not repeat the mistakes of yesterday, but rather learn from them. So helpful if we remember that each day gives us fresh opportunities, engineered by God, to reflect life and joy and love.

New day – new me – new provision from God, who daily gives us the grace we need, so that our lives are like that verse Sabine quoted this morning – well-watered gardens.

And we are part of God’s precious human family – new day, new us.

And yet some days we know we will struggle, as we face the consquences of our earlier actions, as we open our eyes to another day of pain, sadness, anxiety, depression, disaster. On such days, such endless days, we need to sense both directly and through the love of others the sustaining presence of our Father’s love. We are loved, cherished, accompanied in our pain through the dark times when life seems simply ‘more of the same.’

I look out of the window as I type, and there – a rainbow arcing above the Culduthel Woods.

Ultimately, as we live each day to the full extent we are able, we look forward to a new creation, a new beginning.